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Book Review of The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare: A Tale of Forgery and Folly

The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare: A Tale of Forgery and Folly
garythefowler avatar reviewed on + 65 more book reviews


Good fun, quick and easy read. From the DJ: "In the winter of 1795, a frustrated young writer named William-Henry Ireland stood petrified in his father's study as two of England's most esteemed scholars interrogated him about a tattered piece of paper that he claimed to have found in an old trunk. It was a note from William Shakespeare. Or was it? In the months that followed, Ireland produced a torrent of Shakespearean fabrications: letters, poetry, drawingseven an original full-length play... staged before a tumutuous full house at London's prestigious Drury Lane Theatre. The documents were forensically implausible, but the people who inspected them ached to see first hand what had flowed from Shakespeare's quill. And so they did."